Well, I like the general idea. I briefly checked prices. If one ordered 100 stickers big enough to cover the top of a Mac Mini, the cost per sticker would be roughly 1 USD / less than 1 EUR. Even with additional shipping charges, that is quite affordable

The problem is that the stickers would need to be cut out to fit the exact shape of the Mac Mini (rounded corners). I am not sure how much a custom-made sticker shape might add to the cost.

@ASiegelA custom shaped high quality vinyl sticker is what I'm thinking of currently but the cost could be prohibitive.

@AmigadaveSounds nice

@KickstartHaving designs people can print and do themselves is a good idea, it'll allow choice because in all likely hood if I go with what I'm thinking, only one design will get made.

@DiskDoctorThe main reason I'm thinking of doing this is because I'm also planning on supplying tested/cleaned used mac minis to new users, and a lot of used minis have yellowed and/or scratched tops. I thought a nice quality morphos sticker would tidy them up a bit.

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The most important thing of course is the design itself. I'm thinking that the design needs to be a good generic one, something that isn't going to devide opinion. Ok you're never going to get something everyone loves but you don't want a design that some love and some hate. Better a design that is universally thought of as "nice". That's the reason I've used the metallix wallpaper in my poor quality mock up. It probably wouldn't be everyone's number one choice but I can't see it being really disliked. I'm no artist or graphic designer. So if someone else wants to come up with some designs so we could have a poll to choose one for the sticker, that would be great! If not I'll probably go with the metallix idea (as long as the morphos team guys say it's ok for it to be used).

A custom shaped high quality vinyl sticker is what I'm thinking of currently but the cost could be prohibitive.

I did some more research this morning. It appears that custom shapes do not add much to the production costs if anything.

I think an interesting idea would be to go for a "chrome sticker" with a simple elegant butterfly in the middle. The reflective, grey / metallic surface of chrome stickers should fit quite well to the Mac Mini case design.

Thanks for doing the research. I'm at work today and I'm ducking in and out of the office trying to look things up and check back here. Not ideal for getting anything done. Luckily I'm effectively my own boss otherwise I'd probably get sacked for skiving!

I had thought of those "chrome" stickers but some I've come across, the design wears off them quite easily. I presume it's possible to get better ones than that?

@Jambalah

Nice design I will print it off and see how it looks on top of a Mac mini.

That's very interesting, I should have realised that this sort of thing would already exist. I've done a quick search but most of the sites seem to be American. Anyone know of an EU based firm offering similar services? I'd look some more myself but I'm supposed to be working...

i suppose you can find something like this in the UK. I can email them and ask them if they would do some custom skin, an "official" (or several) morphos skin would be nice.

[ Edited by SoundSquare on 2009/9/26 16:08 ]

That would be a great idea, but their skins are a bit pricey. Having it pre-cut to the exact dimensions and curves at the corners would be a nice advantage to having to cut it ourselves, but if the difference in the cost is going to be $1.50 for one I have to cut out and $25.00 for one that is pre-cut, I think I'll do the cutting myself.

Lots of nice ideas/designs appearing in this thread.I think I will plow ahead with a decent sticker as a low cost solution. The skins are nice but more expensive than I would like.

Haven't had time to try out Jambalah designs actually on a mini (sorry about that Jambalah). I've been too busy taking Mac minis apart and running hardware tests, re-installing OS X etc.

Slightly off topic:Opened up a 1.25ghz model to find a spider had been living inside it! Quite a lot of cobwebs inside and the dead body of the spider itself. The machine runs well though. Another mini I bought non-functional, I've managed to get running. Airport card seems to have been the main problem and the combi drive is buggered. When I got it booted up the first time I had the very nice surprise to discover it's a 1.5ghz, 64mb VRAM model rather than the 1.42ghz model that it was advertised as.I paid ?56 plus shipping for it, what a bargain!